


Ashes of Roses

by Catchclaw



Series: Anteros, Eros, and Aphrodite [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, Magic, Multi, POV First Person Soulless Sam Winchester, Rough Sex, Season/Series 06, Sex Magic, Soulless Sam Winchester, Threesome - M/M/M, Wincestiel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:40:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Denver, after Dean, Sam has a flash of what's missing, of what he and Cas really need: love. The kind that will make them risk summoning Aphrodite, risk going after Dean in the dark, risk reaching for a kind of happiness that the three of them can only find together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes of Roses

Aphrodite was a bitch.

All shimmer and gold, like a mirror that's been left out in the sun. It was hard to tell what was real and what just a reflection, a flicker of an image from my own mind.

Because one minute, she was Jess.

Another, Sarah.

Madison.

Ruby.

My mother.

It--she--kept shifting, shimmering like a candle about to burst.

But her voice was a constant: low and lovely and hollow.

"Well," she said. "Isn't this cozy."

She looked over Cas and I, naked and bloody, sketched in sigils and panting. Exhausted. 

Summoning a goddess took more than a few herbs and a flash bang.

Took us, together. Our blood, our bodies.

She crossed her arms, her wings tucking themselves around her shoulders.

"My patience is not infinite. Speak. Or I will rip it from your tongues, why you have forced me to come here."

"Dean," I said, my fingers caught on Cas' neck. "It's Dean. My brother. We can't find him."

She--Sarah--raised an eyebrow. Appraising.

"And why is it that you are looking?" she asked. 

"Because," Cas said. For both of us. "We need him. And he needs us."

**

At first, it was all about hurting Cas, for me.

Punishing him.

There was part of me that hated him for bringing Dean back, for giving my brother another chance to worm his way back into my life.

And I told him that, when we fucked.

His head would fall back, his smile wide and bright and desperate as I pushed in. As I ducked my head down and said, soft: "Hate you, Cas, you son-of-a-bitch. Why'd you do it? Why? Why couldn't you leave him there to burn?"

And the more I'd curse him, the hotter he'd get. The louder. The tighter he'd grip my arms, the harder his hold on my hips.

He has a beautiful mouth. An obedient body.

He didn't fight me, didn't resist, no matter how aggressive I was. How violent.

Unless I told him to.

The first time, he didn't believe me. Didn't think that's what I really wanted. Until I took my hands away, got up, and left him alone on the bed. Turned my back and reached for my clothes.

And I was almost dressed before he got a damn clue, before he leapt up and tackled me, threw his body into mine. Surprisingly strong, angels. Something that's easy to forget.

He punched me in the side and I turned, grabbed his arms, pinned him to the floor. Made him come with my hips, my voice, my taunts, all without touching his cock.

After that, he listened.

After that, all I had to do was look at him in the right way, raise my voice to him, just a little, and he'd fucking attack me, fists and teeth ferocious. Until I'd fight back, catch his shoulder in my hand and toss him across the room. I'd slam my fist into his chest and catch him as he fell, his mouth open and ready and smiling.

Always with the fucking smiling, when I touched him.

I didn't understand him. I still don't.

Hell, for a long time, I didn't even like him.

But he wanted me, and I could get off on that. On having something, being something, that he wanted. On keeping him from getting it until I was ready to give.

And he liked that. God, he loved it. Loved the darkness in me, the silence. I didn't ask anything of him; I took. He offered me nothing except himself, except the body that wasn't his to begin with.

So I would curse him and he would moan.

I would slap him and he would beg.

I would fuck him too hard, too much. I would hurt him. And he would cry out for more.

It was a lot of things, that part of our lives together.

But it wasn't love.

And that was ok with me. Fuck, I was happy to be free of love, of all the emotional baggage that a soul brings. The hurt. The pain. The fear. 

And it was ok with him. He didn't want my love, exactly. He wanted all the darkness I could spill into him, all the rot I could dig into his soul.

And then Dean came.

**

We were in Denver when he showed up out of nowhere.

Oh, I knew he'd been trailing us. I'd sensed him on and off for awhile. But I didn't care. Didn't matter. I was focused on Cas, on the black knots I could tie him into. On my own pleasure.

Dean had nothing to do with any of that.

But one night I left to buy beer and came back to see Dean at the foot of the bed, Cas a long red rush, his hips bucking into Dean's mouth.

And I almost killed him. I did. I was a minute away from snapping his neck, from driving him away for good when he touched me, did Dean. Hit me with some hoodoo and the last clear memory I have is of kissing him, of feeling his lips under mine and melting, tasting my love for him on his tongue.

It was only after, after he'd disappeared again, after we woke up alone and fucked out and bereft that we figured out what had happened. Near enough, anyway: Dean had come to us, worked a magic, and made love with us. To us.

And then he was gone. But he left some of his love--of himself--behind.

When Cas and I kissed, after that, there was tenderness behind it. Affection. Something more than a desire to control, or to be weak, or to shut all the way down by losing ourselves in the other.

When I pushed him to his knees and offered him my cock, after Dean, Cas would stroke me, tease me, weave his tongue over the shaft and I'd take it, lean my head back and groan and not grab his neck, force myself down his throat, like before.

Even when I fucked him, held his hips in my hands and buried myself in his body, it was different. Still hard and fast, but because he liked it that way, not just because it was what I wanted. I listened to his body, somehow, and he let it speak to me.

Even my curses were cut with "baby." Which he loved.

Yeah. It was different, after Dean came. I was.

It's not like my soul magically reappeared, or I became a real boy, or anything. It was more like: I had a little bit of Dean in me again, around me, enough to make me remember what it had been like, once. To love. And when I had that again--

I was different. 

Before I went downstairs, before my soul got left behind, I loved Dean for so long that it was second nature. Autonomic: heartbeat, breathing, and Dean.

I was his. He was mine. And neither of us ever did a damn thing about it.

So there was Jess and Sarah and Madison and all the fucking girls that Dean slept with along the way. All of them laid out between us like chits, like booty in a bingo game that neither of us could ever win. 

No one was ever gonna call that last number.

And then he died. And I was free.

But Cas saved him, lifted him out of Hell and put me right back in chains. A slave to something I could never have. And I hated that, not having a choice. Having Dean thrust back into my life like it was nothing, like I was supposed to be grateful.

And, well. A lot of shit happened, after that.

So fucking Cas, hating Cas? It was like salve to that wound, I think. Gave me a way to leave Dean behind, to push him out of my life, finally, in a way I couldn't do on my own.

And then, hey, what do you know? Dean shows the fuck up. Again.

But this time, he left something behind in his wake.

**

A few weeks after Denver, we were in Oregon, some little no-name place near the coast. Craggy and cut and wild. Beautiful. We weren't there for any reason other than I wanted to be; it was quiet, there. Peaceful. A place where I could think, sort out all the weird shit parading around in my brain.

All the--feelings, or whatever, that I hadn't been able to shake. For Cas. For Dean.

It was early, the sun not all the way up yet. I woke up to Cas' mouth on my chest. His fingers rushing over my ribs. Easy. Slow. Kind of hypnotizing. 

I kept my eyes closed and let him work me over. Let him whisper into my skin and laugh, drag his tongue across my stomach and moan something in Enochian.

I'd never let him touch me like that. Hell, he'd never tried to before.

He was light. And I was a little less dark with his hands on me, like that. 

Finally he moved over me, brushed his lips across my face.

"You are not fooling anyone," he said gravely. "It is evident that you are awake." Beat. "At least, a part of you is."

I opened my eyes and he was grinning, twinkling above me. I slid my fingers into his hair and tugged him down. He made a greedy noise and kissed me, eager and teasing, until I breathed, "Castiel--" and wrapped my arms around his body, moulded him to me.

He held me in the sheets with his smile and filled me with light. Drew the best out of me and spread it over my chest, lapped it up from my skin.

And it did something to me, laying myself open to him like that. Drinking him in rather than draining him dry.

It made me think of Dean. 

I buried my face in Cas' neck and ached for Dean. His voice. His stupid jokes. His terror, at seeing me like this. Changed. Different.

His mouth with my name falling from it. His skin with my fingers dug in, tracing scars that I'd forgotten. Some that I'd put there.

And all at once I remembered Denver, all that he'd done to us there. To me. 

The feel of his cock in my hands.

The sound of his voice, pleading: "Fuck me. Wanna come with you inside me."

The crush of his body around me, drawing me in, holding me fast. Refusing to let me go.

I made a noise, I guess, because Cas raised his head and the look on his face, I knew, reflected my own.

"Dean," he said softly. "Yes. I miss him too." He touched my face, slid his thumb over the tears.

I don't cry. I hadn't, since I got back from Hell. But then, at that moment, I couldn't stop.

Cas held me close and said nothing. Not then. Just let me sniffle into his hair and sigh until I fell asleep, Dean's hands on my waist and his breath in my ear, whispering "Sammy. Sammy."

"So," Cas said later, squinting into the afternoon sun. "How do we find him?"

And the short answer was: we couldn't. 

We didn't know what Dean had done, exactly; whose magic he'd worked, what deity he'd invoked. But I figured it had to be related to Anteros, the thing that had hurt him in the first place, had driven the three of us together into bed. Had trapped Dean between Cas and I, his love for us both like daggers in his heart before we kissed him, soothed him, made him come with our names in his mouth.

I went to the lore. Cas went to his sources, the few that wouldn't rat him out to the stragglers still fighting to avenge Raphael. And it all pointed to one being, to a goddess of love herself, mother to Anteros and his brother Eros: Aphrodite.

The lore said she could heal love that her sons had disrupted or interfered with. That she could bandage the wounds so tight that they would heal. Eventually.

"He whom Love touches not walks in darkness," Plato said. And that was me. Darkness. Until Dean came back to us and laid out the chain that links us one to the other to the other. A chain that Cas and I had ignored, had pretended never existed.

But the lore also says: "All men serve her of their own free will." Right.

**

Aphrodite liked Cas. I think that's why she decided to help us and not just smite us out of spite.

She took one look at me and sneered, haughty and beautiful. My mother.

But when she looked at Cas, her face softened. Jess. She saw a beauty in Cas, I think, that doesn't exist in me. That can't.

She flowed down and wavered in front of him. Reached a hand out and traced the blood, the come dried on his chest.

And I swear, the thing purred. Ruby.

"Angel," she said. Honey and smoke. "You know where he is now, don't you?" 

Cas blinked. Nodded, her magic flashing behind his eyes.

She reached up, started stroking his neck. "Yes. Take your friend here. Go to him. To Dean. He will see you. He will not want to, but he will." She raised an eyebrow at me. "And you. Brother. You must kiss him." 

She reached over and pressed her fingers to my lips. And in. She tasted like roses and ash, a burning sweetness that I couldn't help but suck off her skin. 

She smiled at me. Tolerant. Turned her attention back to Cas, even as she still addressed me. "He will not want you to kiss him," she said, watching Cas turn, twist into her hand. "He will resist. But. If you do, it will begin to heal, what lies between you all. And then you must decide what it is you wish to do, with that."

She leaned down, Madison. Cupped Cas' face in her palm and kissed him, bewitched him, her tongue slipping over his lips. He moaned, my Cas. Opened his mouth and let her in.

I stood there, pinned. Furious. But not stupid enough to fuck with a goddess of love. 

After a time. Too long. She raised her head, Jess, and drifted up, out of reach. 

"If you summon me again," she said, "even you, sweet angel, I will kill you both without a second thought. So." She flickered above us, fading. "I suggest that you do not."

And she was gone.

Cas turned to me, shaking. "He is in New Mexico," he said, "Albuquerque." His voice sounded odd. Out of tune. "Interstate 40, near the old Route 3. He is alone, and he is frightened. Angry."

His face changed, like a switch had been thrown in his head. Like he'd reached the end of Aphrodite's tape.

He reached for me, his fingers over my face, his voice his own but his words still strangled. "Sam," he breathed into my face. "Please. Don't want to taste her. Please. Take her out of my mouth."

And she must have bewitched us both, Aphrodite, because the candles burned hotter, his breath tasted sweeter, his come was like fire on my skin.

**

It was hot as Hell in Albuquerque. I can say this with some authority.

We waited until the sun went down, holed up in this motel next to the interstate: the Crossroads Motel. If either of us had cared, at that point, we would have probably kept driving, looked for a place to stay where the irony didn't cut so deep. 

But we were both on edge. Anxious. Cas was quiet, pulled all the way into himself. Thinking what, I don't know. 

My nerves pushed themselves to the edge of my skin. Felt like pine needles were jutting out of my arms, my legs. I was oversensitive as fuck, twitchy and tired of feeling whatever it was that was driving us to do this, to go to the one person who'd shoot us first and ask questions later.

The one person, maybe, who had the right to do that.

Finally. Dark. Still a fucking furnace outside.

I drove where Cas told me, following the road just out of town and over, to this place where the mountains were hanging right there, practically crawling up on top of you if you looked at them too hard.

It was a step down from the Crossroads, where Dean was. Ramshackle would be putting it mildly. But it was quiet. Out of the way. I could see why he'd chosen it. 

I turned off the car and reached for the glove compartment, for my gun. Cas caught my wrist. My eyes.

"No," he said. "That will not be necessary."

And I believed him.

That blast of heat when we stepped out, Cas leading, me just a shadow behind. Watching.

Dean didn't wait for us to knock. Flung the door open, scowling, cradling a shotgun in his arms. A blast of cold meeting us in the dark.

"What the fuck do you want?" he barked, and now I could hear the hurt the want there, where before I might have heard only pity and pain, in his voice.

"Dean," Cas said. Gentle. "We have something to discuss with you. May we come inside your dwelling?"

And you could see it, the struggle between what Dean wanted--to cuss us out and slam the door in Cas' face--and what the goddess had done to him. Her magicks.

She won.

"Y-yeah," he stuttered, moving away from the door and looking fucking startled about it. "Come in."

Inside, I put my back to the door and let Cas do the talking. Watched Dean tuck the gun away, reluctant.

"Dean," Cas said again. "We are aware of your machinations."

Dean made a face.

"What the hell are you talking about?" 

Cas tried again. "Your--seduction of Sam and I. In Denver. The one which relied upon a magical--"

Dean flushed and turned away, started turning tight circles in the corner of the room.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Cas," he said. Blustering.

"Bullshit," I growled.

They swiveled, green and blue spotlights on my face.

"Dean," I said. Tight. "We know what happened in Denver. What you did to us."

He blanched for a moment and then came at me, defiant.

"Really?" he said. "What is it you know, Sam?" 

Cas reached for his arm.

"It is not--we are not angry with you. We wish only to--"

He threw Cas off, his face cracked in a bitter smile.

"Oh, 'we're' not, huh?" he said. "Anything else 'we'd' like to share with me? Since I'm not in on what the fuck is going on here."

Whatever thread of patience I'd been hanging onto? It snapped, seeing him bitch out like that.

So I took two steps and grabbed him.

"Listen, you stupid son-of-a-bitch," I snarled. "Cas and I are here for you. If you'd just shut up for a goddamn minute and--"

Dean spat in my face.

Childish. Stupid. Inarticulate.

Bastard.

I slapped him, hard, caught his head in my hand and kissed him. Ground my mouth down into his, biting his lips, and he fought me. Tried to bite back.

Cas flew in behind him and we held Dean between us, like we'd done before, that first time. After the Anteros. To save him, again.

But Dean kept thrashing, kept fighting us. Being saved. He clamped his mouth shut even as I licked down, tried to work my way in.

Cas locked his arms around Dean's chest. Threw in some angel strength for good measure. Got him still, just for a second. Pushed his mouth into Dean's neck, whispering, soothing. "Let us help you, Dean. Please. Let us love you, baby."

Dean made a noise in his throat, a sound like a sob, and that gave me an in, enough of an opening to kiss him full and deep.

When our tongues touched, I tasted the goddess again: ashes of roses.

Dean's body rippled between us like a wave. He groaned into my mouth and wrapped his arms around me. Raked his fingers down my back and sighed, shuddered.

Surrendered.

And I don't know if it was Aphrodite, still, or if we were responsible, but something sparked, caught, between the three of us.

All at once there was flame, a flash fire that had us all moaning, that sent our clothes up in smoke and tossed us on the bed, tangled. 

Dean pushing Cas into the sheets, his hips working, their mouths turning, my fingers on Dean's back, tracing the curve of his spine. 

Cas in my lap, digging fierce kisses into my lips, Dean's eyes shining over his shoulder, never leaving mine. 

And then Dean was under me, his legs sliding around my hips, his smile--

It hit me like a truck, that smile. How much I'd missed it.

Cas' nails on my neck, his tongue under my ear. His voice, encouraging. Entreating.

"Yes," he breathed. "Fuck him. Want to see your bodies joined."

And we both groaned at that, Dean and I, which only made Cas arch, press his cock into my back.

"And if you are very good," he sighed. "I will do the same for you, Sam."

Dean made a noise under me, hot against my face, that was like glass breaking. Like bells spilling out of his mouth.

"Sammy," he whispered. "Sammy."

"Dean," I said, meeting his smile with my own. "I love you."

**

Cas was conscious first. Always is. 

I wake up with him humming into my back. Happy. His fingers tracing my hip.

I stir and Dean touches my face, his fingers fast over my jaw. Kisses me before my eyes can open. Slow and lazy. Soft.

Soon they have me going, Cas' hips kicking into mine from behind, Dean's mouth curving over my lips, his fingers on my cock. This easy rhythm, back and forth, our bodies locked like links in a chain, one after the other after the other. Their voices turning over my head, telling me yes and yes and come, Sam, come for me, Sammy, come on, baby, yes, like that, close, so close, Sam, so close--

And when I break, shoot all over Dean's fingers and into the sheets, they kiss me, plant me on my back and take turns feeding me fire. 

Aphrodite said it's up to us to figure out what happens next. What we're gonna do with each other, after this.

The choice is ours, she said. 

Their tongues turn in my mouth, in each others'. Their bodies intertwined over mine, laughing, and in this moment, now? That's enough.


End file.
